Everything you need to know about running and life and any other random crap I find bouncing through my mind like a ping pong ball. And always be sure your shoes are happy.

Archive for the tag “biking”

Here follows a riveting, step-by-step recap of last weekend’s rain-athlon. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll be forever changed. You’ll never get this four minutes back.

After taking most of Thursday to get my head back on, I did well Friday. It finally came down to the fact that I couldn’t face being a wimp. It came down to ego. Facing the triathlon was the lesser of two evils. I needed the bragging rights, I couldn’t sit home pouting while everyone else put on their big pants and did the race. Plus – did I mention? – they have free beer.

Once I figured that out and got moving I felt better. I got organized, printed a triathlon check list and realized I’d done well getting everything arranged and packed. The alarm went off at 4am, the car was loaded and we were set to go. Weather.com never changed its mind; this is what our drive to Tunica looked like:

That’s rain, not a crappy picture. Although it is also a crappy picture. Hey – it was 5am and I was only on my third coffee.

I stalled on the Happy Face a bit when we arrived, getting out of the car in 52 degrees of windy rain. We set up my transition in the rain and mud and went into the hotel to stay as warm and dry as we could until the start. The lobby was full of people in varying stages of concern, irritation, or resignation, making me not the only one with the Idonwannas. One of my friends walked out and went home. I felt slightly envious.

Sitting on the lobby floor I wrestled with the now sentient and obviously reluctant wetsuit which, as I pulled at the rubberized neoprene, continuously snapped back into its original shape like a new rubber band, clinging to my calves as I pulled and stretched with increasing effort. I finally got the reluctant thing – I’m pretty sure it wasn’t any happier than the rest of us – about halfway up my thighs. Standing, I jumped in place and tugged on the suit, because jumping up and down helps? At one point I got my arms into the arm holes but couldn’t stand straight because the crotch was still halfway up my thighs. Normally this type of thing would be a bit embarrassing, bent in half, in public, captive to a large stretchy garment of rubber, but everyone else was doing the same dance.

The best part? When I finally got it on, found a stranger to zip me and was able to stand straight? I had to go to the bathroom. And it wasn’t optional.

Thank you, nice lady in the bathroom, whom I’ve never met before, because with my hair smashed inside the rubber swimming condom and my body squished flatter than a pancake you looked for a moment as though someone was not in the correct restroom, and yet you didn’t scream.

Waiting for the start, standing in barefoot in the wet, muddy grass in a sleeveless wetsuit and 52-degree rain made the jump into 68-degree water feel nice. Even nicer, I felt no fear of the swim. I wasn’t much faster than last year, in fact it seemed to take much longer – because this time I knew where I was going? – but I made it. I ran through the squishy muddy grass to my transition site. The wetsuit that didn’t want me is now my best friend, “please, I love you, don’t leave me” and I plopped in the mud, finally jerking it off my feet, pulling socks on over the mud – who cared at this point – and crammed on my bike shoes.

Running through the grassy muddy transition I worried about all the stuff that could get crammed in my cleats and if I’d be able to clip in, but the Gods of Rainy Triathlons provided a handy-dandy shoe washing station:

That’s not me ^^

This is me:

This IS my Happy Face ^^
(DISCLAIMER – I am not a member of the Very Awesome Thunder Tri Team, but Kat C. loaned me this jacket to stay warm on the bike. See? Awesome people.)

The bike was great! I was hitting 20 – 21 mph! It was so easy! No strain, quads kicking in and not complaining, calves are silent – maybe it’s a miracle? I’ve had a miraculous cycling miracle with my 2014 training plan of four bike rides? This is AWESOME! I’m golden! I’m like … in a shitton of trouble, turning left halfway through the bike into a straight-on headwind blowing misty rain in my face. I dropped from 20mph to 10 in about 13 seconds. A woman in my age group passed me and disappeared into the distance. Dammit.

If you’ve never done a run following a bike ride, even a really slow bike ride, it’s weird. Cycling cadence is much higher than a run cadence; your legs get used to going round and round faster than usual, so when you head out on the run it feels like you’re still slogging through the mud of transition, yet you’re gasping for air, doing a 100-count-per-minute cadence. It seems to take most of the first mile to get the message to my legs that they can relax now. I managed to pass the lady who’d passed me on the bike and came into the chute knowing I’d left everything on the course, finishing 6 minutes slower than last year, all of it lost on the bike.

Saturday afternoon sitting around the pool with everyone I found myself thinking, “I could still register for tomorrow’s Olympic distance”, and I considered it for a moment, before realizing I was completely untrained for it. I knew, given my sincere desire not to injure this year, that it was a bad idea. But if I were trained up enough…

It took considerable effort and most of the day – and a sunny day at that, which would normally help more than it did – but I think I have finally successfully completed the most recently needed headeroidectomy.

This time last year, a couple days before the Memphis in May Sprint Tri, I was also a bitch, but it was born of fear. Heart-pounding, jump-out-of-the-car-and-run-to-the-portajohn fear. I wish I were a better person, a person who could panic with grace and good humor, but so far in my life that has never happened. At least for now I’m stuck being a jerk. Hopefully I’m shortening the jerk duration but I have no proof.

I’ll tell you the difference a year makes. I have no reason to believe that you will believe what I’m about to say because I sure didn’t, and I’m the one who heard the words come out of my own mouth, although I could have been channeling some long dead Egyptian god of the Nile, in which case it would have been my own mouth I guess, but not my own words, right? Anyway, you can imagine my shock when one day my mouth said out loud, “I’d like to get a swim in the lake.”

I turned around reallyquick to be sure Jeff Dunham was not standing behind me playing a practical joke but, no, it was just me and Murphy, and Murph was busy chasing a squirrel and barking. He’s good and all, but I’m pretty sure he cannot be a ventriloquist and bark at the same time. Apparently it was my mouth which said that.

Obviously it was surprising. It was not what I expected my mouth to say, but there you go, it did, and when I thought about it I realized that my mouth was right. Brain also thought it would be nice to swim in the lake.

So, we did. Becky and John and Jay came over and we jumped in the cold lake water squealing like girls even though two of us were boys and we swam around until the cold water made us get a little vertigo. Then we climbed out of the lake, had a beer or two and ate pizza. It was quite a nice afternoon and I was pleased.

I’ve ridden my bike in circles clipping/unclipping, I think I know how to shift. I may not really love riding the bike but the panic is mostly gone. The swim was actually fun, especially the beer part afterward, which was my favorite. And, of course, all that’s left after that is the run.

My training is not where I wish it were, it’s harder to run slower than I was running last year, which means it’s near impossible to run faster, and faster would still be slower than it used to be. This makes my ego hurt, and it probably hurt your brain reading that sentence but I swear it makes sense. So I know that I’m not going to kill the triathlon this weekend. I’m just going to swim without panic, ride my bike with a normal workout heart rate and finish up with a run.

Then – and this is where the genius comes in – you are going to be soooo impressed – all afternoon Saturday I will sit around the pool in the sunshine with my friends and free beer.

I repeat – all I have to do is go for a little swim, tool around on my bike, and then run, and I get all the free, warm, soft sunshine I want! And if I get too warm in the free sunshine, I can get in the pool! Then I can get in the sun! Then the pool!

Okay, plot development. This is the sad part of the movie where the heroine is deathly ill and the hero is gone off to war or something, I don’t know. Wherever heroes go.

Current forecast for Tunica this Saturday: feel like temp of 50, 60%-70% chance of rain. Mostly cloudy and mid 60’s for the afternoon. I felt very frustrated, which is quite 3 year-old-of me, albeit an improvement over being very 2-year-old-ish. Crank crank pout and stomp feet. DON’T LIKE. Make it go away.

Of course it’s not going anywhere, unlike our flake of a hero.

So this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to get wet in the water, then I may get wet on the bike, which I’ll be riding in already wet attire, and then I’ll run in wet attire which wouldn’t get any drier regardless, it will get wetter with rain, or with sweat, or with both. I’m going to think of the participants who are doing both the Saturday and the Sunday race, with a 40% chance of thunderstorms Sunday morning also. I’m going to think of Becky’s bike breaking last Saturday, and I’m going to think about all the people who wish they had the luxury of running, biking and/or swimming but they don’t, and I may do it soaking wet and cold. Who knows?

Then, as long as I don’t fall off the bike or on my face, I’ll be done. If I do it without complaining and with grace and charm I will be a heroine, at least in my own eyes.

Well, I’ve just been sitting around on my flukey bootie doing nothing.

I did do some laundry. But only because I ran out of running gear. A person needs priorities.

I even went for another bike ride. Becky is an insidious person and acted like I would be doing her a favor if I rode with her. Eventually I decided to give it one last try, since I’m registered for a Tri. Because I’m stupid. Maybe I should not admit publicly that I’m stupid, but, really, not admitting it doesn’t change it. Plus it’s rather hard to hide the fact when I just typed “I’m registered for a Tri” because anyone reading that knows immediately that I am stupid.

The reason I didn’t want to ride my bike any more is that I don’t like the feeling of sheer terror. Call me stupid (I know…) but I just don’t. I don’t get happy with the adrenaline rush, heart pounding, head throbbing with blood rushing through my brain by the gallon, my body shaking with the flood of fight-or-die hormones.

One weekend when I was in high school a bunch of us, as we sometimes did, had a picnic in the desert. This was always a day-long affair, everyone driving out in the boonies, kids jumping out of the cars and running all over, moms setting out food and visiting. The dads would take us all out to some wash and teach us to shoot cans. My brother had a dirt bike he’d bought with his newspaper route money and the bigger kids took turns riding it around.

It was my turn and I was about a mile from camp, doing no more than 25mph (it had a governor) when I hit a wash and the bike bogged in the sand, so I punched it – just as I also hit a rock with the front tire and the bike came to an immediate and abrupt stop. I, however, did not stop, going head first over the handlebars, landing on my chin. Prior to that moment it was never on my radar that a person can break their jaw, but I knew immediately and instinctively that I had. I also had blood dripping on my shirt from somewhere on my face.

A few months earlier I’d sprained my ankle which necessitated a visit to the ER for an x-ray to be sure it wasn’t broken. So far in my life – and I hope no further – I have broken my finger, my wrist, my jaw, my toe and my foot; I’ve learned it’s good to go ahead and check. While there a young man in another room had a nose that would not quit bleeding and they were packing it full of something (cotton? I don’t know). That kid was screaming like they were sawing off his foot.

Thus my concern, walking the mile back to camp with a broken jaw which I could not feel because actually I was in shock, was not my jaw, but the source of blood, because I had no intention of ever letting anyone near my nose. Fortunately it turned out it was just a big gash in my chin from the impact.

By the time we’d driven back into town and stopped at the house to get insurance info the shock had worn off and let me tell you, a broken jaw: hurts. Like a mother.

And they would not give me anything for pain in case of head trauma. I hung around the ER for a few hours while they tended to other people, finally x-raying me, the tech apologizing profusely as he turned my head this way and that. Yep, broken, up to a room where I dozed off and on, in pain, until the next morning when they set my jaw. Still un-medicated, because they also needed me able to communicate while they set the jaw. Which I’m grateful for, I didn’t want a crooked face but – it hurt.

I spent the next six weeks walking around with my mouth wired shut, talking funny and carrying wire cutters because if I ever got a stomach virus or bad food things could get ugly pretty quickly.

That’s the end of the story.

Until a week or two ago, when I met Max. Mas is a beautiful dog, probably a golden-lab mix, who appeared to be maybe a year old, 80 pounds or so, and newly, deeply in love with me. He saw me riding Matilda, minding my own business, my HR about 189 since Brain wouldn’t quit thinking about how it would feel to go face first over the handlebars, and he knew we needed to be Best Friends. Flush with adoration, deaf to his owner’s fervent pleas, Max raced out of his yard and down the street after me, barking his joy and devotion. I managed to slow before he reached me, getting one foot unclipped before he jumped on me. The other foot was still clipped, and while he leaned against me in slavish love and his poor owner continued to yell at the now-deaf-with-adoration dog I managed to unclip just in time, catching myself before I went over.

Max suddenly and miraculously had his hearing restored at the exact same time the owner arrived at the scene, apologizing profusely and thanking me for my patience and understanding. I nodded that I do understand, I also have a dog who suffers event-induced deafness. And I couldn’t have said anything cranky because my heart was stuck up in my throat doing about 250.

Shaking and shivering I got on the bike and wobbled back home, where I leaned Matilda against the wall, took off my helmet and threw it at the wall, following that with my bike shoes and gloves, swearing loudly with colorful words that it was over. Sorry, Matilda, that’s the end of the relationship. It’s not you, it’s me, I want a divorce, you can have the storage shed in the settlement; there you will slowly wither and die, covered with cobwebs and eventually rust.

I knew – I knew – that Becky would not let it lie. She was good. She didn’t say anything. Like, what? I’m stubborn? She and hubs, I know what they are thinking when they get all quiet and don’t mention the elephant in the room.

But she’s so darn little and cute when she gets stubborn, and I didn’t want to make her sad, so I finally put Matilda in the back of the car and drove to meet up near the end of her ride. Since my biggest worry on the bike is not riding the bike – it’s the sudden and unexpected stop that keeps me in panic mode – I had the brilliant idea of riding in circles and stopping. There I was, in the St. Phillip parking lot, riding in circles. Ride – unclip – stop – repeat, while the ladies walking into the church looked at me like I might need an intervention.

It’s 3:30am and I’m chugging copious amounts of coffee from my beloved Grumpy Cat cup which questions, Do I look like I rise and shine? which you both know I do not.

This is the coffee cup I should be using:

except it should read, I can’t brain today, I have the Brain.

It’s a beautiful morning. You know, for being 3:30am, dark as a black hole and all that sh*t. I let Murph T. Dog out and it occurs to me that I would not be interested in running around a dark back yard at 3:30 in the morning because evil lurks in back yards with a large shining utility light which is useless and only lights the leaves of the trees below it, never a ray filtering all the way through to light your path where zombies are roaming, occasionally gently knocking accidentally into one another and bouncing off in opposite directions while waiting to eat my brains. Apparently the dog is not so concerned with Zombies. Sometimes I question if he has a brain anyway, especially after he rolls in raccoon shit, so maybe he has a point.

Brains is plural, and they would be welcome to one of my brains. I don’t need both of them and I seldom use either of them.

Brain 2: “OH MY GOD I FELT A TWITCH I FELT A TWITCH IN OUR BUTT. OUR BUTT IS GOING TO FALL OFF AGAIN.”

Terrilee: “I’m gonna kill you both.”

Sigh. I give up. I turn off the alarm which has no need to ring since, once again, I’m up before it has a chance. Alarm is currently undergoing therapy, feeling completely unappreciated in our relationship.

I am hopeful for this run. Last weekend was the one we always aim for – it was a great day, a little rain storm came through about mile 5, we were running through the country side, rolling hills, trees branching and meeting overhead so it was shady and cooler. It was a new course to run, I’ve biked it before but you know it looks different on the ground as opposed to speeding past at the back of pack of bikers, wheezing, peddling until you think both legs will spin off in opposite directions, panicked at every little bump and rock that you will go flying over the handlebars and end up on FB like Killer did that time last summer, lying there unconscious while her hubs looked on worriedly, just one broken bone, little surgery on that, 3-4th degree shoulder separation, hey.

Anyway, I’m hopeful for this run. Last week was awesome – no falling off butt, no pain down the entire back of my leg, no heel pain, no burning metatarsal. Since both brains are wide awake and may be reading this I could possibly have jinxed myself, especially with OCD Brain #2, which will probably start feeling twitches at .2 miles in. I had 20 to do last weekend and again this weekend. Last weekend Brains behaved themselves until mile 18 when they screamed in tandem, “OMG if this were the race we’d have EIGHT MORE MILES WE CAN’T RUN EIGHT MORE MILES TODAY!!” Took a mile to convince myself I didn’t HAVE to do eight more today, I only had to do 2 more. Plus I have an awesome running buddy who will pull me through if I need.

Next week we drop back, not sure what we do, then a 22 miler and then the taper. If my brains are scrambled now just wait until the taper. I begin to understand why Van Gogh sliced off an ear. He may have been trying to listen to only one brain.

Well, over here in wonderland it’s been a merry-go-round of crazy people registering for races and memberships and emailing me to find out if they can contract for services. I’m kinda shaking my head. I understand Forbes and the like have criteria they use, formulas for determining which cities get slapped with unfittest places to live, unhealthiest population, etc., but I sure wish someone from those groups would show up at the Road Race 5K starting line, 1,315 runners all the colors of the rainbow, towing the line, Garmins locked and loaded, The Voice Of MRTC bellowing GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORRRRRRRRRRRRRNING RUNNNNNNNNNNNERS!

There was not a lot of unfit unhealthiness hanging around that morning.

There were a few people with headphones blaring so loudly that they could not hear the car behind them honking and fellow (un-hearing impaired) runners screaming CAR BACK! repeatedly. This is what I think: If you cannot run without music blaring so loudly into your head that you cannot hear fellow runners yelling and repeated car honking, you need to go see someone for your hearing loss.

Thus we can conclude from this story that running can cause deafness.

Here’s something you two may not know: Triathlons can cause blindness. True.

By the way, I did go on to do a 2nd triathlon because apparently even though I am taking my medication regularly it isn’t working properly. I wanted to do a 3rd, which was this weekend, but I am also training for a marathon and with 20 miles to run this morning I thought it prudent not to blow out 1-1/2 or 2 hours worth of energy the day before. I did that a few weeks ago when I did several hours of yard work and then did 16 miles the next day. It was carnage. Ugly, ugly, ugly. If that run had a personality it would have been a cross between that idiot that owns Abercrombie and Fitch and the car salesman who screams the entire commercial. Which, how the hell he sells any cars, I don’t know. I HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU!!! COME ON OVER!!!! I CAN GET YOU INTO A CAR TODAY!!!!! Hey, I can get me into a car today, too. And it’s not yours.

The thing about Speedos is, no one can really wear them well. Even Olympic swimmers. I look at the TV and nervously slide my glance away, the anorexic young things have stomachs so flat I’m positive the Speedo actually has nothing to grip and any second now that sucker is heading straight for the floor. Look at them next Olympics. They have no butt, no hips and no stomach. The poor Speedo is hanging on for dear life. “Ohhhh no….he’s diving into the pool!! HOLD ON!” Meanwhile a nation of 18-22 year old females hover on the edge of the couch, watching intently. “I didn’t know you were so interested in sports, honey,” wonders their collective fathers.

And if those incredibly fit, flat-tummied guys can’t, I can tell you for absolute certainty who else can’t: that 60-something guy at the triathlon yesterday. I saw him riding up and because I am so finely tuned into the universe I knew – I KNEW – this was a cluster looking for a place. I tried not to look but it’s like going to WalMart on a Saturday morning in July. Oh, crap. I can’t unsee that. OOPS, I can’t unsee that. OH SHIT, I really can’t unsee THAT. As someone once said, it’s like watching two watermelons fight their way out of a bag.

So I saw Mr. Speedo (that’s not his real name. I made that up. I don’t really know his real name and if offered the opportunity to know his real name I would decline, loudly and probably not using the manners my momma taught me.) Anyway, Mr. Speedo rode up to the transition area on his bike in the little bitty Speedo and nothing else except his transition bag. I’ve noticed at WalMart on Saturdays that as people age they start to sag a bit, and it appears that no specific body parts are exempt, if you get my drift. I’m not positive but I think I heard a tiny voice coming from the direction of the Speedo say “For the Love of All That’s Holy someone save me”, but that could have been my eyeballs talking, I’m not sure. At any rate maybe he has poor vision and XS and XL all look the same.

I walked off and tried to find someone to talk to so I could get the image stuck on my eyeballs to start to fade. You know, like if someone next to you says, HEY! DO. NOT. Look at the sun! you immediately stare straight at the sun even though your brain is screaming DON’T and then you have a huge orange ball floating in front of everything you look at for 10 minutes and you really can’t see anything else except around the edges. I found my friend Johncharles and he’s easy enough to talk to that you can visit with him even if there is a large blob burned into your retinas and you can only see the outline of his head and his face is obscured. Eventually I felt better.

Later I found my other friend, Hermione (all names, by the way, have been changed to protect the innocent). We went over to the swim exit and visited with Johncharles. I was turned to talk to Hermione so my back was to the boat launch as the runners came out of the water. I saw her face contort, terror and disbelief in her eyes as she whispered, “Ohhhh…gawd…”

I knew. I knew what she was looking at and I turned my head anyway, yep, Mr. Speedo (whom, I should amend, is, I’m sure, a very very nice man and someone’s daddy and I will get several extra days in timeout in Heaven for this blog but I can’t stop myself now, I have to finish this story so you will be warned and will know why blindness could occur).

I turned back but poor Hermione was still a bit stunned and moving slowly. “Ohhh…no…we have…testicle.”

DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK OMG DO NOT LOOK it took everything I had not to look but I succeeded. I want to live to see my grandson’s sweet face one more time.

As someone once said, “I know worrying works because 99% of everything I worry about never happens.”

Saturday, 2:45am, dark, warm, muggy. I’d been awake for a while, trying to sleep but failing. My mind was not going to let me forget we face Armageddon this morning. Talking sense to it was useless. WAKE WAKE, EMERGENCY! it shouted in my sleep, until I finally surrendered and padded barefoot downstairs, firing up the Keurig. I looked out at the foggy night, details blurred into soft gold and black while I sipped strong hot coffee, cozy and comforting. Soft air gently wrapped around me, sound suspended and dampened, moving slowly through the thick air like the drawls of old Southern ladies visiting on Mississippi porches. Murphy looked about with me and seemed to understand. The world muffled to velvet, we moved slowly not to disturb that sweet gentle silence.

Can you hear it? Can you feel it?

I’d found an interactive site and created a check list personalized to my preference. Everything had been checked off three times, lined up in the hallway and kitchen; Hubs has done this so often his checklist is in his head. We loaded up the car and bikes. The hour long drive to Tunica seemed endless, of course, and I could not leg jiggle enough to expend the nervous energy I had. Hubs looked at me. “Are you OK?” Hell no I’m not OK, do I look OK? I’m hopping like a spider on a hot griddle in a front seat the size of jet fighter cockpit. But you are sweet and kind and loving and I thank you for your concern although I can’t actually speak right now.

You learn something new every day, so they say, and I learned something new about Fight or Flight: you body is going to jettison everything possible. Thankfully the Expo Center was nice and large and you can easily sprint through the foyer to the equally nice Ladies Room. I also noticed I didn’t seem to be the only person doing so.

There’s a lot of detail getting all that gear out of a car, into the Transition Area and set up properly, more than you need to know unless you have had a lobotomy recently and now want to do a triathlon; if that’s happened let me know and I’ll get with you. Otherwise suffice it to say that many surgeries are done with less preparation, although without a doubt they are more sterile, since I was soon to walk through fish sh*t and then drag that sh*t back into Transition and deposit it in my socks. Bleach. Just don’t think, and bleach.

For the fourth damn time in a row I put the damn wetsuit on backward. Next time I’m leaving it backward. If there is a next time. I got in the lake for a warm-up and paddled out to the first buoy where I stopped, my feet not resting on what can only be described as the un-bottom. There was nothing solid. It just sort of floated, a half-substance. The stuff nightmares are made of, the evil fog rising slowly through the cemetery enveloping the heroine’s feet…her ankles…her calves…rising, pulling, wrapping about her, slowly sucking away her life…

We lined up for the swim by age group. Fortunately I was toward the front of the line with some older men behind us. They sort the groups randomly every time. Next time I could be right in front of the 20-24 males and get run over like a train. If there were a next time.

One of the ladies heard a couple of us commiserating over our first and possibly last triathlon. She gave us an invaluable piece of advice: when you get in the water, don’t kick. Just pull. This will keep your heart rate under control until you’ve had time to warm up and get the feel of everything. And then there I was, on the ramp, looking at my friend the photographer, praying her huge and hugely expensive camera would fail, nothing personal Donna, sorry, but I do not want to be forever remembered in that figure flattering wetsuit, swimming hair condom and goggles.

Not kicking made all the difference. I cornered the first buoy and realized that the wetsuit, my new BFF, made me buoyant enough that all I had to do was pull. Now it’s just another workout in the pool. With a deadly, life-sucking un-bottom, but you cannot have everything no matter how you try.

And then, I got pissed. I’m sorry, but I’m a bitch and it should just be acknowledged. I could try to hide it but it’s like trying to hide behind swimming goggles and a self-image crushing wetsuit: We know you’re in there Terri, no use hiding. The really nice lady right in front of me at the start was zig-zagging like a Singer sewing machine and I could not get around her. At first I thought it was me going crooked, but I realized that as I breathed I was sighting on the seawall, and it was always about the same place. So I went to the right. She was in front of me, again. Dammit. I swam to the left. BOOM. I went back right. Bang.

Oh, hell no. I stopped, deadly cloud of lake bottom rising to kill me. I watched, weighing time, enough time to sight her but not enough time to be completely sucked into a slow lake bottom death. She went…ri..no, left. I went right as fast as I could and aimed for the finish.

Not too quick in the transition (learning curve) I headed out on the bike. Nervous, I couldn’t clip for what seemed forever. We turned onto the highway and I got into a rhythm. Hey. This is nice. Mississippi is flat! The roads are coned off! No &^%%’s asking me if I pay wheel tax! I don’t have to stop at the lights! Cruising, I’m just cruising, me and Matilda, we’re just out, riding, having a good time when, suddenly, &^$#!!! that woman is IN FRONT OF ME.

Sorry, Lady, but yes, you do, and here’s your shirt.

Oh, hell no. I tooled along behind her for a few minutes, getting a feel for her pace. It was too slow for me, so I passed. No eye contract, I’m just out here, just out here riding my bike, me and Matilda, nothing to see here, Lady, just keep going slow, that’s good.

I kept a pace that felt a bit of a push but not uncomfortable since I had no idea what my legs would do off the bike. Next time, if it happened that I went batsh*t crazy more than once, I would know better how much to push it.

At mile 10, cruising, suddenly, what the $%#@!!?? She PASSED me.

Oh, hell no. I looked at my quads. Sorry dudes, this might hurt but it’s for your own good, and I knocked it into a higher gear and started stepping on those pedals. We went from the Beatles to some Highway to Hell in 13 seconds.

Coming in I heard Hubs, Becky and Heather yelling for me, although I didn’t try to see them, not falling over on the bike seemed more important, and at the dismount line there stood Killer, screaming for me! I looked at her: “I’m pissed now.”

“SHE’S PISSED NOW!” Cheryl screamed in triumph, “GO TERRI!”

This time transition was as fast as I could handle it, gear thrown everywhere, shoes shoved on and I’m outta here, running out of transition and around the corner where

I waited, jogging behind her, getting a feel for her pace. It looked to me like she had one gear – a good one, but it looked like she was a pretty steady runner, so if I passed her she might not have a higher gear. My legs loosened up and got into a running rhythm. I passed her and I had no intention of letting it happen again. Somewhere in the last mile I stopped at a turn and walked a bit, looking at the field behind me. She was still in the same steady gear, and I took off again. I am never doing this crazy voodoo doodoo again, but if I did ever maybe lose all my meds in a tropical storm or something I would definitely push the bike a bit harder and I would totally want my run stronger, I thought, as I died on the turn into the last few hundred miles.

“TERRI!! ONLY 150 YARDS!!!” someone screamed.

Well hell yes, I can do that, I thought, and I hammered on home.

You want some REAL crazy voodoo doodoo?

So, next time, if I ever do this again, not that I will, but if I did, I know I can’t expect that kind of thing because the fast ones stayed home or – most of them – waited to do the Olympic distance on Sunday (not being modest, I just know who they are). But if there were a next time, I’d still do it differently, and I’d still find someone in front of me to pick off.

Hubs and I were out of town last week. You might think I would feel completely free to leave town now the kids are grown and gone, no worries, enjoy the trip, relax, eat drink and be merry.

But, no. First, I no longer have that burning desire to desert Rome as it burns, my mother and four children waving forlornly as we back down the drive, desperately repressing the jiggling as my legs begin the Happy Dance under the dashboard. NO VOMIT! NO DIAPERS! NO CRYING AND FIGHTING AND STEPPING ON DEADLY LEGOS! I’m FREE!

I can lazily drink coffee and read the paper daily now. I don’t have to put on adult clothes to take the kids to school and work the phones in the office from 8am to noon or help in the clinic wiping snot and blood. I don’t have to camp out in a hotel to have a bathroom all to myself. I don’t have to hide the chocolates in a tampon box. I don’t have to worry about organizing soccer/cheer/homework/scouts/cupcakes for the birthday party before leaving everyone. No worries, now. Free Free Free.

Instead I spent three days prior to leaving town waking at 3 and 4am worrying about — The Damn Cats. What if they refuse to eat? What if they pee on the bed? What if they … I don’t know … jeeze, they’re CATS – how much could go wrong?? But, no…wake, roll over, worry.

Obsess much?

Meanwhile – no pressure here – every damn day hubs insists that I need to try on his wetsuit and be sure it fits. Fine, I tried it on. OK, right, it was on backward but what the hell. It’s not like it’s gender specific. If it fits backwards it should fit frontwards. No, apparently it didn’t count, backwards negates the experience so now I have to try it on … again.

Then, after I try it on again, he thinks I need to take it to the Center and swim in the damn thing. Remember the pool running incident (here)? Where all the senior water exercise class people glared at Becky and me in shock and awe? What do you think it will do to them if I show up at the pool in a f*cking wetsuit? How long will it take management to get all the exploded brain matter out of that water? And can they sue me for the damages?

Still hubs remains – daily – sincere in his insistent insistence that I must absolutely without doubt swim in water with the wetsuit. I pointed out that if I fail to do so prior to the race, and it is a wetsuit legal race, I will swim in the water to warm up and I will be wearing the wetsuit. I think that counts as swimming before the race. I mean, what if I swim in the wetsuit at the Center and I find out it doesn’t work so well? Is that going to change the temperature of the water Saturday?

Last week I ordered a tri-suit. It was in the mail when we got home. I pulled it out of the packaging. This sucker will not fit a skinny pre-pubescent 13-year-old. I don’t know why they wasted a 9×13 envelope to send it to me, it would have fit fine in a letter sized and saved some postage, which they handily charged me. Now I’ve spent $79 + tax, shipping and handling on something that weighs about four ounces and I may wear only once in my life – if I can even get it on. And hubs is happy I spent the money. If I buy a new lipstick and he sees it he asks me how much it cost. Tri-suit? Wet-suit? Bike? Helmet? Bike shoes? He’s throwing money at it like it was beads in New Orleans and he might see some boobs.

I spent one morning at the hotel swimming, then got on the spin bike and did 13 miles, then ran three. There, I’ve done the distance, so mentally I got that out of the way. What I realized is that I do not care at all about this triathlon like I have all the races I’ve trained for. I’m just as obsessive about getting everything organized, not forgetting anything, hoping I don’t bonk, but I don’t really care about doing the event. All I really care about is getting it over with.

Training for halves, fulls, 50K’s, I check weather for weeks, mentally preparing for wind/rain/floods/solar flares and meteors. I’m scared, nervous – but it’s an excited nervous fright. It can still get ugly – marathoniritationitis (with a graphic, here) is nothing to laugh at, but there’s still an excitement about the whole thing. This one: if it rains, oh well. If it’s hot, well damn. If it’s cold, well sh*t. Oh, well. If I get there, and I don’t like the weather, I might just decide not to do the event, and right now I cannot dredge up any impending regret, other than I’d be forced to register for another one and go through all this again.

Last night I dreamed I had a curse that if I talked to someone it would take away one of their powers. Unfortunately Becky asked me a question in my dream. I replied without thinking and it stripped her power to do triathlons.

Obsess much?? This is going to be a bitch of a week…

You can’t fall off a marathon, and you can’t sink in a 50K, and all you need is some shorts, a shirt and some shoes.

The truth is: I’m cranky and pissed and obsessed about the cats because I’m scared of this one and it’s not an excited nervousness. It’s just fear.

“You should try Indian food. It’s better than a triathlon.” I won’t name the source, but let’s just call her the honorary mayor of Turdville today. 😉

Heather suggested Indian food. Becky had never had Indian food but I pointed out how good it could be. Somehow, after a nice buffet at Bombay Palace, I was elected the Honorary Mayor of Turdville after declaring today to be “National Stupid Crap Weather Compounded By Being a Monday and I Have No Girl Scout Cookies Left in the Hiding PlaceDay and I hereby decree that everyone is not only permitted, but encouraged – nay – REQUIRED – to go ahead and quit trying to feel all perky and sunshiny because you’re just faking it anyway and that’s pissing me off too.”

Here is our National Stupid Crap Weather Day logo:

And our Official Turdville Motto: “Welcome to Turdville. Go Away.”

My Staph Sargent-at-arms thought we should have an official Turdville Poem and suggested a Poetry contest. As the Mayor of Turdville I felt it only right that I be the judge of the contest, which I – surprisingly – won! and declared myself the Poet Laureate of Turdville. I offer my sincere thanks and heart-felt apologies to Dr. Seuss, although I do believe he might have felt the same way, this spring.

ODE TO TURDVILLE

Congratulations! Today is your day.
It’s going to rain the whole world away!
Can’t get the car out – the driveway’s a Bay!

You have brains in your head.
(Well. That’s what they said).
You’re on your own and you know what you know.
And YOU know where! To Turdville you’ll go!

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care.
You’ll say, “They just passed my bike — by only a hair!”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of cleat,
You’re too smart to go riding on any DAMN street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town.
It’s opener there in the wide open air.
Out there things can happen and frequently do
To people on bikes, cars yelling at you.

And then things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along. You’ll get rained upon, too.

OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.
You still lag behind, despite your 12-speed.
You’ll be passed by the whole gang, they soon take the lead.
Wherever you bike, it won’t matter, you’re not best.
Karma bites ass – it rains upon you and the rest.

BWAhahaha.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.
I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true
Pouring rain and floods can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch.
Your gang will fly past – you’ll be left in a Lurch.
After a 90% uphill with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
You ride slowly, carefully, those damn dogs there just BARKED.
A place you could strain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How deep is that f*cking sinkhole? How much can you spin?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
Chambers Chapel? Damn uphill! Maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
No matter – it’ll be cloudy and windy, you’ll find,
A mind-maker-upper can’t make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place:

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go, Or the rain to stop
Shit. Leak in the roof. Where’s damn mop?
Or the mail to come, with more stupid bills.
Like riding on bikes, it’s always UP hills
The waiting around for a Yes or No
Weather.com just said, IT’S GOING TO SNOW??

Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
Or you asshole boss to go fly a kite
Waiting around for another Friday night
Or waiting for a chance to see some DAYLIGHT
Waiting, perhaps, for another damn break
But, no, JUST MORE RAIN, my yard’s now a LAKE.
I’ve flipped my wig, no more can I TAKE!
I’m going to bed, want to live? DO NOT WAKE.

All due credit to any triathlete out there. This is a bunch of hard work – not that I doubted that, having watched hubs do every distance from sprint to Full Ironman over the years. I’m doing, to my knowledge, the shortest Tri you can. I think the only way I could do a shorter race is to trick my way into a Kid’s Tri. “Hey, I had a growth spurt! I’m tall for my age!” I won’t do that though, not because I’m an honest sort of person, but because some tiny dudette would go spinning past me on their little training wheels bike sporting a white wicker basket with pink streamers and I would cry. I would get off my bike and throw it on the ground and stomp my feet and cry.

Crazy Becky Heather Killer Hubs cannot seem to quit dropping helpful hints about triathlons. Very helpful hints, too, with the exception that I still can’t figure out if I’m flattered that hubs, while discussing this Crazy Weather and whether it would be a wet suit legal race, offered me his wet suit. Not so much even that he offered it, but that he seemed to think it would fit. Isn’t it in some hubanding manual somewhere that you never indicate that your dainty wife could fit into anything belonging to your manly self??

The learning curve is steepening rapidly. Suddenly what seemed to be an hour or so consisting of doggie paddling in a warm, shallow lake, peddling along a highway and then going for a little jog has turned into Mothra vs. Godzilla, and we all know what happened to Mothra.

(I’m just quoting Wiki. Sentence above she is referred to in is somehow dying.)

I realized this weekend that I didn’t even know the distances of all three events. I thought it was a 5K run, and I know for a branded-in-my-brain fact that the swim is 400 yards but had no idea what the bike was. Ten miles? Eighteen miles? Who knew? And what kind of special stupid do you have to be to register for a race for which you do not actually know the distances?

Me, and one other lady.

I trained for three or four months for my first half marathon. I talked hydration nutrition elimination clothing shoes for months. I bought a Garmin and tracked every single mile like a new religion. Date, time, distance, pace, weather, everything. The day dawned. I’d set everything out the night before, of course, nervously reviewing it all 37 times. Hubs and the twins were going to meet me at the finish line, so I hitched a ride with a friend, a seasoned runner, marathoner and triathlete.

She noticed I seemed a bit nervous – probably the incessant leg jiggling, which I’m actually doing right now, I guess Pavlovian leg jiggling as I remember the story? Can leg jiggling be Pavlovian?

Yes, it’s my first half! I told her, jiggling, head bobbing, jerking slightly and slavering a bit at the corners of my mouth, my water bottle full of bubbles as it shook uncontrollably.

Well, I lived. I did the half and thought I’d conquered the world. Tired, stiff and sore – yes, I did – I wore my race shirt triumphantly to work the next morning and told everyone who couldn’t hide fast enough every excruciating detail, mile after mile. I did not wear the finisher’s medal only because it kept clanking against my desk in a very irritating fashion.

The second day, as even more soreness set in and I was forced to grab the edge of the desk to sit or stand, my friend came into my office.

“You did that half marathon, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yep! It was great I was so excited I did it! It was hard but I did it!” (Why was she asking this? I’d talked about it every day for the past several months.)

She then told me that a lady she bowled with the evening before was limping terribly and could hardly get to the line to bowl. She asked the woman if she was OK. The woman (a smoker who walked a mile or two daily and bowled as her forms of exercise) related this:

She’d registered for “that 5K” over the weekend; she wanted to walk the 3 miles in support of the charity. Except after a while, when she thought she surely should have hit three miles by now, she looked about and realized there was no finish line. In fact, what she saw was a sign that stated Mile 4. Asking around she discovered there was no 5K, only a half and a full marathon. Well, what to do? So she continued on and walked the entire damn half marathon with NO TRAINING. Her feet were covered in blisters and she could hardly move her legs.

And she was my age.

After my brain stopped exploding I asked the woman’s name and immediately looked up the race results. Fortunately she was about the last in our age group, or my running career would have been over right then.

But you gotta admit, the woman did not give up.

And I won’t, either.

Anything you’re looking at that intimidates you? Are you going to try?

As you two might already know, I have a couple of Monday issues happening here.

First, I’m supposed to be having an “off” day. Obviously most of my days are “off” so I expect you’re both wondering what’s so unusual about that. Cynics, both of you, I’m supposed to be taking the day off from working out. So of course I slept wonderfully and didn’t get up until 7am, waking refreshed and enthused about maybe swimming (right, OK, not really enthused, but you know…sorta not hating the idea. That’s a lot like being enthused.)

I have to admit I no longer look at swimming like it was my second pregnancy and this time I knew what natural childbirth felt like and knew I was going to have to go through it all again anyway. See? That’s positive, right?

I remember being pregnant with the twins, sitting in a chair, unable to see my toes. Hubs asked me about the Lamaze classes, wondering how learning a breathing technique was helpful. “Does it make it hurt less, then?” he asked.

In the most polite way possible I told him to go shut his buddy in the door over there and work on breathing slowly and deeply, which would be helpful in demonstrating to him both the feeling of labor and the benefit of proper breathing. He politely declined and indicated he was happy to take me at my word.

So today I’m not going swimming or running or biking (but I am going to sneak in some yard work SHHHH be vewy vewy quiet.)

Since I’m full of energy and it’s a pretty day and also I put it off for the past three days I decided to go to Kroger’s and buy food. Secondly, I decided to actually make dinner tonight. Fasten the seatbelts, it’s going to be a rough ride. I even looked up a recipe. Then I decided we don’t need no stinking recipe and I’m going to make up my own plan. Baked pork chops, rice and veggies. I’ll let you know if hubs survives. There’s really no other option because I forgot to buy the Lean Cuisines and I’m not going back to the store. I figure more than once a week in Kroger is probably a leading cause of brain leakage, and I have reason for that belief.

Part of the problem is the Muzak. Usually I can handle a little bit of the orchestral remakes of Back in Black or Somebody to Love because once those get stuck in my head, as they will undoubtedly and without fail do, I don’t feel like I need to thread dental floss through my ears and clean out my head.

Oddly, I kept feeling I should not go to Kroger this morning. Not that I didn’t want to, I was actually feeling rather enthused about buying food and cooking it, as opposed to buying it and letting it rot. And I kept thinking of other things to take care of instead of going to the store, but I didn’t want to go this afternoon because I want to get outside in the sunshine and rake up 10 millionbajillion leaves from the 87 trees on our lawn.

OK. FINE. It’s not really 87 trees. I don’t want to count them though, because then for the rest of my life at some point every freeking day my brain would randomly announce WE HAVE 23 TREES ON OUR LAWN and when I’m in the home and don’t recognize my own toes my brain would still randomly announce out loud to the nurse WE HAVE 23 TREES ON OUR LAWN. The nurses will all call me Tree Lady and they’ll all know which resident they’re talking about. Sometimes they’ll just shorten it to “23 needs a bed pan” and they’ll all know then, too.

Anyway, I didn’t listen to my own inner psychic and I went to Kroger. Probably, too, if I weren’t so damn well hydrated it would still have worked out OK. But, no, I’ve had like 40 ounces of water already this morning plus three coffees, so of course I had to go to the Ladies’ Room – this is the polite term for bathroom in public places – which when you think about it, they can’t call it a bathroom because it has no bath. If it did have a bath I would totally not go in there because I have no clue what I might see at that point, but – without meaning to point fingers – if that woman in front of me in the checkout was naked in a bath and I saw that at Kroger’s I would probably go blind or end up in the home tomorrow telling everyone about the freeking damn trees and drooling.

This is precisely why I will never make it as a nurse. I’ll never play piano either, but if I did, I can tell you one song I would NEVER-NEVER-EVER play: Please Mr., Pleasewhich, unfortunately, came on overhead just as I was checking out.

AND THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED AT THAT STORE!! Let me repeat that as I’m sure you are both completely stunned and cannot believe what you just read: THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED AT THAT STORE!

How can the odds possibly work out that I would hear that damn song twice in the same store? How random is that, anyway? Shouldn’t I have fallen into a black hole first, or hit a hole-in-one at the Masters even though I don’t golf? Wouldn’t those chances be better than hearing that song twice in the same place??? AND it happened in the check out line. If I’d just not gone to the Ladies’ Room. Dammit.

But, no. Here I sit, two hours later, and that song is running through my head like a warm murky stream on a grossly hot day. I even youtubed AC/DC and played it real loud to try getting it out that way, but they can’t seem to kick Olivia out. Probably by Wednesday or Thursday it should be gone.

Secondly, “at my age” which the doctors seem get some perverse joy out of saying, I think there should be some perks. One of the perks I think I should be able to enjoy is not have a pimple grow in the middle of my nose.

I’m concerned that hearing Olivia warble about B17 has flashed me back to my teen years and my pores felt obliged to make me feel right at home. Soon I shall don my jeans that are far too short because my legs are too long and they don’t sell jeans by the inseam yet and get some broccoli stuck in my braces so when I laugh out loud during Monday afternoon Spanish class the popular kids will laugh too.